A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 01 eBook

SECTION II.

Of the first Mission of Friars Predicants and Minorites
to the Tartars.

At the same period, Pope Innocent IV. sent Friar Asceline
of the order of friars predicants, with three other
friars from different convents, with apostolical letters
to the army of the Tartars, exhorting them to desist
from slaughtering mankind, and to adopt the true Christian
faith; and from one of these lately returned, Friar
Simon de St Quintin, of the minorite order, I have
received the relations concerning the transactions
of the Tartars, which are here set down. At the
same period, Friar, John de Plano Carpini of the order
of minorites, with some others, was sent to the Tartars,
and remained travelling among them for sixteen months.
This Friar John hath written a little history, which
is come to our hands, of what he saw among the Tartars,
or learnt from divers persons living in captivity.
From which I have inserted such things, in the following
relation, as were wanting in the accounts given me
by Friar Simon.

SECTION III.

Of the Situation and Quality of the Land of the
Tartars, from Carpini.

The land of Mongolia or Tartary is in the east part
of the world, where the east and north are believed
to unite[1]; haying the country of Kathay, and the
people called Solangi on the east; on the south the
country of the Saracens; the land of the Huini on
the south-east; on the west the province of Naimani,
and the ocean on the north. In some parts it is
full of mountains, in other parts quite plain; but
everywhere interspersed with sandy barrens, not an
hundredth part of the whole being fertile, as it cannot
be cultivated except where it is watered with rivers,
which are very rare. Hence there are no towns
or cities, except one named Cracurim[2], which is
said to be tolerably good. We did not see that
place, although within half a day’s journey,
when we were at the horde of Syra, the court of their
great emperor. Although otherwise infertile, this
land is well adapted for the pasture of cattle.
In some places there are woods of small extent, but
the land is mostly destitute of trees; insomuch, that
even the emperor and princes, and all others, warm
themselves and cook their victuals with fires of horse
and cow dung. The climate is very intemperate,
as in the middle of summer there are terrible storms
of thunder and lightning, by which many people are
killed, and even then there are great falls of snow,
and there blow such tempests of cold winds, that sometimes
people can hardly sit on horseback. In one of
these, when near the Syra Horde, by which name they
signify the station of the emperor, or of any of their
princes, we had to throw ourselves prostrate on the
ground, and could not see by reason of the prodigious
dust. It never rains in winter, but frequently
in summer, yet so gently as scarcely to lay the dust,